How much does the tooth fairy pay?

Once your youngster starts shedding baby teeth, parents are faced with a big question: How much does the tooth fairy pay these days? From big bucks left under your kiddo’s tooth pillow to small gifts in place of tooth money, find out what real parents are saying about how much the tooth fairy pays in their house.

Tooth money

“For our family, she leaves $1 if Mom or Dad pull the tooth out for the child,” shares Jacy Cheney of Washington. “If they pull it out themselves, or it falls out on its own, then it’s $2.”

“We give our kids quarters equal to their age,” says Janie Glover of High Point, North Carolina. “So when my daughter lost her tooth at age four, we gave her four quarters.”

“My husband and I left $5 for the first tooth and $1 for each tooth thereafter,” explains Valerie Reddemann of Greenfeet.com. “That is, except for one occasion when the tooth fairy forgot two days in a row. *headsmack* That time he got $3 — the tooth fairy compensated for pain and suffering.”

“The tooth fairy leaves $2 per tooth and $5 per molar,” reveals Mary Anschutz. “However, if the tooth fairy is so busy that he or she cannot make it, i.e., she forgets, then the amount gets doubled.”

Gifts from the tooth fairy

“The tooth fairy for my teens was a mess of remembering to ‘call the tooth fairy’ and trying to dig a tooth out from under the pillow,” recalls Suzanne Bastien. “Now with my elementary kids, they hang their tooth in a tree in the front yard and in the morning they find that the tooth fairy has left a toy under the tree for them. No money… just something to play with.”

“For the first tooth, the tooth fairy left a $25 Cranium game under the pillow,” says Benita Gold of Benita Gold Public Relations. “For the second and third teeth I left a hard back book and then it dawned on me that he is going to lose 18 teeth and I may want to scale it down. I now leave $5 per tooth.”

Tooth pillow treasures

“When my boys were little, the gold dollars were just coming out and were very popular,” recalls Tara Kennedy-Kline of TK’s Toy Box.” Their first tooth, the tooth fairy gave them a little drawstring bag with five gold coins in it. Every tooth since then, they wake up to find one gold coin. They never got the gold dollars for anything else, so they truly believed it was a tooth coin.”

Tooth fairy negotiations

“We offered our son two quarters if he sold his first tooth to us, or he could take his chances with what the tooth fairy might give him — which could be anything from a quarter to a dollar,” shares Jen Hancock of www.jen-hancock.com. “He decided he didn’t want either. He wanted me to keep his tooth safe for him in case he wanted it again.”

Before the tooth fairy makes her first appearance at your abode, keep in mind that the tooth money or tooth pillow goodies left behind set the precedent for the rest of the kids in your brood — but don’t forget to have a little fun, too!